


Queen of the May

by Becky_Blue_Eyes



Series: Becky's Rhaenys Fantasy AUs [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Body Horror, Domestic Violence, Elia Martell Lives, F/M, Flower Crowns, Gen, If you are a fan of Lannisters or Baratheons perhaps don’t read this, Inspired by Midsommar (2019), Language of Flowers, May Day celebrations, Queen of the May, Rhaenys Targaryen Lives, Tywin Lannister Being Tywin Lannister, but literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:07:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24907336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Becky_Blue_Eyes/pseuds/Becky_Blue_Eyes
Summary: In celebration of King Robert Baratheon’s peaceful and prosperous reign, a fortnight-long May Day celebration is held. Princess Rhaenys Targaryen, esteemed guest of the king and betrothed to Crown Prince Joffrey, is a young maid of fifteen; as all young maids can, Rhaenys takes part in the competition to become the next May Queen. The high lords and smallfolk laugh at her earnest determination to win a rose crown as her mother was once scorned for one. They think little of it. Let the girl try her best and win a little bit of self-respect, as she hardly has any left.A fantasy-horror AU somewhat inspired by the 2019 movie Midsommar and the poem “Queen of the May” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Lots and lots of flowers, and blood. Rhaenys and Elia live; the Lannisters and Baratheons come to regret their cruelty towards them.Warning: this story contains gore and domestic violence.
Relationships: Joffrey Baratheon/Rhaenys Targaryen (Daughter of Elia), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Robert Baratheon/Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister/Elia Martell
Series: Becky's Rhaenys Fantasy AUs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1886038
Comments: 32
Kudos: 80





	Queen of the May

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I played around with the ages in this story. Rhaenys is born in 280 AC as per usual, but Joffrey was born at the end of 283 along with Margaery, Myrcella in 285, Shireen in 286, and Tommen in 287. 
> 
> Poetry is taken from “Queen of the May” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;

To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;

Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

* * *

As long as she can remember, Rhaenys knows that her life hangs in the balance of King Robert’s hatred and Lord Tywin’s calculations. Her life and her mother’s. Aegon’s life was snuffed out before he could talk, before Rhaenys could remember more of him other than the red cloak they wrapped him in as a present for Robert.

The red cloak dripped with blood. So much blood, much more blood than Rhaenys, as both a little girl and as a girl half-grown, could ever imagine an infant having. Mother wept that night, and every night after for years, in her private bathroom where she was allowed to be alone. Otherwise Mother never weeps, not even when Tywin wrenches her arm and tells her how worthless she is as a wife and does—does things to her that Rhaenys doesn’t want think about.

But sometimes Rhaenys can’t help but think of how she and Mother are trapped here. They have beautiful dresses and more jewels than a pirate lord can dream of. Any material thing Rhaenys wants, Rhaenys gets. A kitten, a book, a new dress—no princess is as spoiled as Rhaenys, except for Princess Myrcella. Myrcella, Lady Shireen and Lady Margaery are Rhaenys’s only friends because Rhaenys begged Mother for companions and Mother faced Tywin’s disdain as payment. Sometimes she wishes Mother hadn’t done that. Rhaenys isn’t worth it. Rhaenys owes her mother a blood debt that she only knows one way to repay: their freedom.

But that is not something they will give them. Not after her father raped Lady Lyanna and caused a civil war that killed himself, Lyanna, half the realm, Rhaenys’s evil grandfather, her dear grandmother too, and poor little Aegon in his crib…Viserys and Daenerys are far away somewhere in Essos but Rhaenys knows she will never see them again. She will marry Prince Joffrey, and one day he’ll push her down a flight of stairs after making her give him a bunch of sons. He’s already pressed a knife into her arm and carved himself a tiny sliver of flesh as payment for her sins as a Targaryen. He was only eight when that happened.

They’ll never be free. Rhaenys has her friends, and Mother, and her cats. But Tywin has little Jeyne back at Casterly Rock. Jeyne is Rhaenys’s half-sister by him, a year younger than Shireen, and Rhaenys has never met her. Neither has Mother since the day she screamed until the Red Keep shuddered and gave birth to the babe no one expected Mother to survive. Rhaenys remembers all the blood-soaked sheets the maids carted out of her chambers, how they dripped like Aegon’s cloak. But Mother and Jeyne survived; a miracle. All Rhaenys knows for sure is that Jeyne has green eyes, as Myrcella once told Rhaenys one day Jeyne might look just like her or Cersei. What reason would she have to lie? Better Myrcella than Cersei, better grayscale than that!

But then again, hardly matters if Jeyne will grow up to look like Cersei or Mother or even Grandmother Rhaella. Jeyne is under Lord Kevan and Lady Genna’s control and under Tywin’s cruelty. Jeyne herself is an ax above Mother, as there is an ax above her: if Tywin thinks Mother or Rhaenys will run away, or have him poisoned, then Jeyne will pay the price. He told Rhaenys this with one of his not-smiles, as a reminder that she will never see this sister, she will never make friends with her. Jeyne is alone and so is Rhaenys.

It’s true that Rhaenys has made friends—or as close as friends as she could ever be—with the maids and the pages and Varys’s little birds and the guards cycling through and the servants cycling out. But every one of them pities her, pities Mother. The whole Kings Landing does, from the way Robert rages at Mother for her growing rebellion. Rhaenys wants to gouge his eyes out whenever he yells at her. What rebellion? What power do they have here trapped in this cage? Rhaenys and Mother will never be free. Not with them in the Red Keep, not with Jeyne at Casterly Rock—they are never leaving here. One day their husbands will kill them, and who will mourn them then? The chambermaids in Lord Rosby’s castle?!

No, they are alone. She’s known this ever since they made her curtsy before the Iron Throne with Robert and Cersei glaring down at her and screaming at her for her crimes and Mother’s crimes, until she fell and split her lip. And ever since then, she’s known the unsteady balance of her life above the executioner’s axe.

When they let her cousin Arianne write to her—and only Arianne, never her uncles—Arianne swears in their coded cypher that Doran and Oberyn will save her and Mother. Rhaenys doesn’t want to believe it. Her uncles in Dorne protest their glorified hostage situation and make shows of aggression that leads Robert to smash things and Tywin to interrogate Rhaenys and Mother. Oberyn himself has gone to Essos to find Viserys and Daenerys and protect them from Robert’s assassins. Protect them he can, but not Rhaenys and Mother from Robert’s wrath. Even the gracious Lord Hand Jon must one day run out of ways to placate them all. Sometimes Rhaenys prays to the Stranger that they will hire a Faceless Man to kill their captors. But she knows they won’t. She knows how badly Robert loves war, and how his brother Lord Stannis will avenge Robert with unrelenting might if someone were to kill him, and how the Seven Kingdoms have never liked the uppity Dornish to the south. Rhaenys doesn’t want Dorne to suffer for her suffering. She doesn’t want Tywin to call for Jeyne’s death. She’s not worth that.

No, she knows the safest way to free herself. To avoid becoming Joffrey’s queen, she must become the May Queen.

On the first day of true spring, the May Day celebrations run for a fortnight and at the start a maiden is crowned the May Queen. They give her a fancy flower crown and she makes a few speeches about the coming spring and prosperity of a king’s reign and whatever other pageantry. But most of all, she asks the king for a boon, and he must grant it, no matter what. They say that Jenny of Oldstones was May Queen once, and she asked for Prince Duncan’s love; how could he resist her then?

Spring came briefly when Rhaenys was about four years old, but then summer, fall and winter cycled through almost a season per moon until settling into an odd false winter that is too warm for snow but too cold to grow crops. Some Targaryen loyalists saw it as a sign Robert was no true king. Rhaenys saw it as a sign she’d never be happy. But now with Robert’s fat ass on the throne keeping it from toppling over, the weather is finally settling itself for a true spring. And they’ve decided to have the May Day celebrations to gloat over how much better Robert is than Rhaenys’s grandfather. Rhaenys is a maid now, and she knows she won’t be a maid for long—once Joffrey turns fourteen they will marry and that will be that. No, she _must_ win the title of May Queen. Then she will ask Robert to let her and Mother and Jeyne go to Dorne and be freed of Lannisters and Baratheons forever. Rhaenys will take her mother home, and repay everything Mother’s done for her.

She must. She doesn’t care what she must do. She has no other option that won’t bring war back down on Mother’s head and break her spirit again like Aegon’s death did.

Rhaenys tells Mother of all this. Mother brushes out Rhaenys’s hair, dark and curly like all Martell women. Her hands are steady as ever, and no one knows about how Tywin slapped Mother upside the back of the head just this morning. Rhaenys knows. She always knows. She bites her lips bloody though, because if Mother keeps a straight face and a raised chin, so will she.

Mother kisses Rhaenys’s forehead, and when she smiles there’s no pain or fear or hate in her eyes. Rhaenys wonders where it’s all hiding. She knows her own glitters in her smiles and in her fists like the diamonds they drown her with on her birthday. “My clever little sun,” Mother says. “You shouldn’t be worried about me, I do everything I must for you.” Rhaenys repeats that she’ll win for Mother, and Mother pinches the remaining baby fat in her cheek. “Determined, are we? You must practice your dancing, as the dance of the maypole is no easy task.”

The maypole. Rhaenys shivers to imagine dancing around it until everyone else drops out of exhaustion. Rhaenys rests her cheek on Mother’s shoulder. “I’ll practice every day,” she swears. “And when we go back to Dorne, will you take me to the Water Gardens? When they let Arianne write to me, she writes about the blood orange trees and the peach trees.” Rhaenys has never seen these trees, as in the Crownlands the farmers grow apples and fire plums. Daisies and lilies, not jasmine and hibiscuses. And roses from the Reach that came with Margaery.

Mother hugs her tight. “I will, my darling. And we will swim every day, and you’ll meet your cousins, and no one will bother us again.” Mother looks out the window of their gilded cage, and Rhaenys sees the bright determination in her dark eyes. “We will, one way or another. Even if you don’t become the May Queen, I will do whatever it takes. Just you wait and see.”

But Rhaenys doesn’t want to wait. She doesn’t want to make Mother do all the work, just like how Mother’s always done everything. Rhaenys is fourteen now, and she’ll be fifteen for May Day. It is time for her to do her worth, and to make things better for Mother.

* * *

I sleep so sound all night, mother, that I shall never wake,

If you do not call me loud when the day begins to break;

But I must gather knots of flowers, and buds and garlands gay,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

* * *

Days pass into weeks, and then into the different phases of the moon. For her nameday she asks for new dancing shoes and ribbons for her hair. Myrcella teases her for wanting to be the May Queen so badly; Myrcella says she’ll win instead and ask Robert for a thousand silk dresses. Shireen, with her cheek marred by grayscale, also wants to win and Rhaenys guesses that she’ll wish for a cure from Asshai-by-the-Shadow. But Margaery—oh, Rhaenys knows her other friends don’t know about Margaery’s desire. Myrcella and Shireen are sweet as the coming spring, and just as green. But Margaery, brought here at her grandmother’s direction who always has a laugh and a smile for Joffrey and can charm anyone…if she wins, Rhaenys will be freed at least. But not Mother. Not Jeyne. If Rhaenys wins, Margaery will be free to have that awful green-eyed monster as her own, and Myrcella will get her silk dresses one way or another, and Shireen may just sail to Asshai by herself. Everyone wins, as long as Rhaenys does.

So she practices her dancing every day, even when her friends don’t want to and her feet ache and blister. She dances, and she paints all the flowers in the gardens, and she dives deep into the library. She must learn all she can about the history of May Day and its queen. Mother once sat with her, after Cersei had reduced Rhaenys’s worth to what hid between her legs, and told Rhaenys the truth. She tipped up Rhaenys’s chin and told her, “A woman’s worth lies here,” and she tapped Rhaenys’s eyes, and ears, and lips, and hands. “And behind it all is the power to consider it and wield it. When we know the truth of things, and our history, we shape the future in our own images.”

Tyrion would’ve agreed with Mother if he had heard her, Rhaenys bets. Tyrion used to be the only person who would haunt these dark corners of the library. They would seek out strange stories together, he the Imp and she the Dragonspawn, and hide from the rest of the world. He was always nice to her friends too, being Myrcella’s indulgent uncle and Shireen’s confidant and Margaery’s banter partner. And he was nothing but kindness to Rhaenys herself, and Mother. If Rhaenys _had_ to marry a Lannister, or a Baratheon that was more Lannister than not, it would be him. But he’s gone now.

Rhaenys’s stomach twists when she remembers the day Tywin found out Tyrion had disavowed his family name. They were all eating together, with Joffrey pinching Rhaenys’s thigh beneath the table and Robert already furious at Mother. “I won’t have your brother campaigning for independence!” he yelled at Mother. “Not paying his proper dues! Sending ambassadors to Essos! Building all of these aquaducts and farms! His Norvoshi wife playing court—tell him to come here and bend the knee or it’ll be on your head!”

“Your informants are mistaken, Your Grace.” Mother’s voice was as cool as the morning dew frosting over the windows. “Dorne is ever loyal to the Iron Throne, especially as our children are engaged to marry and succeed Your Grace. Any implications of independence or isolationism is just…” Mother shrugged lightly. Rhaenys still wonders how she could be so calm in the face of Robert’s anger and Cersei’s disdain and Tywin’s cruelty. How much a queen she looked then; how much she does still now. “Well, Dorne has always been rather limited with trade and with agriculture. All my brother Doran wants is a stronger Dorne for my niece Arianne to inherit, and that means creating more trade routes and building infrastructure. Perhaps all the kingdoms should work along those lines.” And she sipped her tea.

“You’re right, Dorne has always been the poor relation to the throne,” and Cersei’s voice dripped with acid. “You must be so grateful that you and your daughter may grow up in some semblance of luxury. Darling Jeyne shall never want as poor Arianne must.”

Mother smiled. Joffrey’s nails dug into Rhaenys’s skin to see Mother smile. “Your Grace is ever so kind to worry about us.”

Then a page crept in and handed Tywin a message. It had Tyrion’s personal sigil on it, but not the Lannister one. Tywin’s face never changed expression, but two points of red high on his cheekbones bloomed. Rhaenys shrank into herself, and Mother firmly set down her cup. Cersei dared to ask, “What is it?”

Tywin set his poisonous eyes on Mother. “Tyrion is in Braavos and fancies himself a traveler.” Rhaenys shivered and even Joffrey faltered at the sheer loathing in his voice. Mother didn’t react at all. Tywin then said, “He’s also got it into his mind to set aside the Lannister name and “make a name of his own”. He signed it as merely Tyrion of the Free Cities, along with some drivel about not needing to worry about him anymore.” He flicked the letter to the table and all were silent. Then he growled, “This is your doing, isn’t it?”

Mother blinked. “I have no idea what—”

“Ever the Dornish serpent,” Cersei hissed then, and Robert’s lips twisted into a hateful smile. Jaime…Jaime, as always, just stared straight ahead, no matter how much Rhaenys prayed he would act. Cersei asked, “What lies did you fill my brother’s head with? He cannot be—what was it? Independent? Of his own family?”

“Your brother is fully grown and makes his own decisions. Perhaps if you had spoken with him earlier, he would’ve mentioned his intentions.” Mother then smiled at Rhaenys, and Rhaenys still remembers how her eyes glittered. “Rhaenys, my darling, I’m afraid we’ve kept you from your lessons too long. Be on your way.”

Rhaenys opened her mouth to protest, but then a hint of tightness at Mother’s eyes stopped her. Then she curtsied and made a quick escape. But not quick enough to hear the interrogation begin, and never quick enough to escape the next day where Mother wore long sleeves despite the day’s balmy heat. She doesn’t know if Robert or Tywin or one of the Kingsguard dogs were the one to do it. It hardly matters since they all are one and the same.

In the end Tyrion got to leave Westeros forever. Perhaps Mother encouraged him to leave, perhaps she didn’t, but they blamed her. Even though they all hated him! Rhaenys remembers the awful way they all treated Tyrion as if he were less than human! His own family calling him a halfman and an abomination—of course he left! And she remembers how Tyrion would draw Tywin’s ire away from Rhaenys and make things worse for himself on her behalf. How typical of a Lannister and a Baratheon, to abuse someone for years and then not understand why they’d hate them in return! Rhaenys prays to the Crone every day to give Tyrion the wisdom to make a better life. He, alone out of the Lannisters controlling her life, deserves that.

Jaime is miserable without him, she knows, but in her wicked spite she also prays to the Crone that Jaime will be miserable forever. It’s what he deserves for letting Tywin hurt Mother, for doing nothing while they are all cruel to Mother and to even herself. He did nothing when the Mad King was cruel to Mother either, or to Grandmother. He did nothing but stand there, and sit on the Iron Throne while Aegon’s head dripped from the wall—Rhaenys sees how miserable Jaime is and thinks it naught but just. As for Tywin, and Robert, and Cersei, and Joffrey, and coldhearted Stannis and his loathsome wife Selyse who said not a word against Aegon’s murder and Rhaenys and Mother’s imprisonment, and that preening idiot Renly who is always so awful to Shireen…to the Stranger she prays to in High Valyrian beneath her breath.

In a way it is a good thing Tyrion isn’t here. But still, it is lonely in the library without Tyrion, and Mother is on too tight a leash to join her during the day. Rhaenys must do without their presence. Most of the books she can find about the May Queen are relatively new, in the sense that they’ve been written in the last few centuries. The construction of her dress and crown; historical May Queens and their wishes; how according to the Faith the May Queen is an aspect of the Maiden…all things Rhaenys writes down and memorizes, but it’s hardly enough. The further back in the library she goes, however, the older the books get. Books turn to bound parchment turn to scrolls turn to fragments of scrolls. She knows High Valyrian as her mother tongue, as well as the common tongue and the bits of Rhoynish that Mother sneaks into her bedtime stories. But these are written in a language she doesn’t know and she must depend on maester’s translations.

She runs her fingers over the strange marks. Her fingertips tingle over the odd swirls and harsh strokes. She reads the maester’s note, “This dates back eight thousand years before Aegon’s Conquest, and is three stanzas of The Ballad of Rose Crane. Rose takes the aspect of the Maiden and May Queen bestowing spring to the Reach after a long winter.” Rhaenys narrows her eyes and sets the fragment aside. What use is that to her? She needs to know—to know how to win! What it _means_ to win! How did this all come about, and how can she use it to her advantage! She must become the May Queen, her mother’s life depends on it!

May Day looms over her head and she is no closer to understanding than she was nearly half a year ago when she started. It consumes her. One night she can hardly sleep from the stress of it all, not even after Mother sings to her. When she can sleep her dreams are strange. She dreams of an endless sea of flowers, and sunlight so radiant it burns from behind her eyes, and tall white trees with leaves as red as roses. Each dream leaves her shivering in bed and drenched in sweat. At some time near the hour of the wolf, she throws off her covers with a huff and dresses in a robe. Obviously she shan’t be getting any sleep tonight! Then she heads back to the library and mutters to herself about stupid ballads and stupid summaries and stupid old scrolls. Didn’t her father value scrolls over his family and kingdom? Didn’t he leave Mother and her and Aegon to die so he could rape Lyanna for the same of those stupid scrolls? Yes, Mother once said that her father committed his crimes because of what he once read. Rhaenys will spit on the next scroll to give her useless knowledge.

She goes back to where she was earlier, and in her half-awake haze the dim shadows from the lit torches bend. They bend in odd shapes, and she walks between the bends to the furthest corner of the furthest alcove in the furthest loft. Here, the fragments have no translations at all and are encased in glass. She ghosts her fingers over the glass’s surface. She recognizes some of the strange markings—the runes, she realizes. Runes from before the common tongue, back when the First Men lived all over Westeros. There, she notes, is the rune for Rose. Not merely Rose Crane, but Rose of Red Lake who became a crane. Rose of Red Lake, daughter of Garth Greenhand, the man who made the Reach fertile…Rhaenys stares at the runes until she can make pictures out of them.

Rhaenys raises her hand to rub the sleep from her eyes, but then lowers it. Yes…yes, she can see the pictures! How couldn’t she not before? And their tale is wordless, wordless and thrumming. She sees the May Queen descend from the sun before a king kneeling in the winter dead grass, and he offers her…wine? Wine, so much wine, spilling from a thousand cups. And a thousand young people are born from the wine. Then the May Queen asks for a boon which the king grants because he must grant her the boon, he must. And when he does, the May Queen brings the spring, and all the valleys and mountains and river plains turn green. Then she drinks the wine and returns to the earth—the May Queen is one of three, the May Queen and the Harvest Queen and the Solstice Queen. Maiden; Mother; Crone, but far more powerful, far more terrifying to behold with their triple crowns of flowers and wheat and stones. Three-queens-in-one, and the May Queen heralds the coming procession. She requires the boon to bring the earth back to life. The rest have their own rituals in the passing of the seasons, in the passing of hands from one to the other. The Harvest Queen brings the bounty, and the Solstice Queen brings the transitions of the earth, and then the May Queen comes at the end once again to being anew.

Once a king married the May Queen herself and they had a son with green hands and green eyes. Then he had a daughter who was a May Queen, and her daughter too, and so many daughters with so much as a drop of First Men blood became May Queens and Harvest Queens and Solstice Queens. And Rhaenys has splatters of First Men blood from her Arryn and Blackwood ancestors, and Mors Martell was a First Man when he married Nymeria, and so many people pulling her up from the roots of her family tree were here First.

So many were the First, and she’ll be the First too…yes, she’ll be the First too…

Rhaenys wakes up with her cheek red and creased from her robe’s sleeve. Her hair and face are a mess, and her wretched spy-septa is furious that she’s missed her first lesson. Rhaenys apologizes and goes off to wash up and present herself as a proper princess to the court. But when she goes to put the scrolls away, to her excitement she can still read the runes! All day at back of her mind she thrums, she _vibrates_ because she knows where the May Queen came from before the Faith said she did. And if she knows the past, she can change her future.

* * *

He thought I was a ghost, mother, for I was all in white,

And I ran by him without speaking, like a flash of light.

They call me cruel-hearted, but I care not what they say,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

* * *

Her cheeks stings from where Joffrey slapped it. But it doesn’t hurt as much as it ought to, and truthfully she only turned her chin with the momentum rather than the shock.

Myrcella frets and Shireen calls for their septa and Margaery stares with her bright golden eyes. They—what had they been doing? Dancing around in the gardens and braiding flower crowns? Then Joffrey came and made fun of Rhaenys’s crown, and when she didn’t react to him he decided to remind her that he was speaking to her. Yes, that was it. Myrcella yells, “You need to be nice to her, Joff! She’s your betrothed!”

“As if I ever wanted to marry her! Father says that all dragonspawn belong at the bottom of the sea.” He grips her chin and his ugly green eyes bore into hers. Ugly green eyes and wormy lips and the world’s weakest chin. What a hideous creature. “And a half-deaf dragonspawn at that. You’re lucky my grandfather thinks you’re worth something, otherwise I’d finish what Father started at the Ruby Ford.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shireen hisses. She steps forward. “I’ll tell my own father about this if you don’t leave us alone.”

“Oh, I know what I’m talking about.” Joffrey smiles, and Rhaenys knows that when he smiles she is sure to suffer for it. “First Father killed Prince Rhaegar at the Ruby Ford, as all rapers deserve to die. Then Uncle Jaime killed the Mad King before he could burn anyone else. And you know what they say about Princess—I mean, _Lady_ Elia. How she took her infant son by his legs and swung him—”

Rhaenys clenches her fists until her shoulders shake. How _dare_ he! “It was the Mountain who killed my brother. I saw it.” Rhaenys hardly recognizes her voice and Myrcella flinches. Oh Myrcella, her darling sweet stupid soft friend. Stupid soft little girl with her stupid soft little life. She gets to have two brothers; even if one is evil, that’s two more than Rhaenys has! She had a brother once! And now her so-called betrothed mocks her for it, blames Mother for his murder! “You’re lucky you weren’t there when it happened, Your Highness. He could’ve smashed in your head like a ripe pumpkin like one hand.”

Joffrey blusters and glares at her. But Rhaenys imagines it. The Mountain Who Rode Away From His Crimes, until he was found dead in his keep from a poison Rhaenys shouldn’t know about. Mother was very particular about it. About him, and Amory Lorch who once threatened to stab Rhaenys a thousand times, and half a dozen other Lannister men who were there on the night of the Sack. She wonders if Tywin knows what his meek and mild lady wife knows. She wonders if any of the septas shadowing Mother’s every step and second know. If they do, they must know better not to tell.

Rhaenys knows what Joffrey’s head would look like inside out. How his brains would drip onto the ground from the stone walls, a mass of pink and red and white, like spilled strawberry sherbet. She knows, so she tells him so. Myrcella turns green and Shireen steps between her and Joffrey who reaches out to wrench her arm from her shoulder and Margaery is screaming at Jaime to stop them. Jaime is here? Late as ever, since Joffrey’s already pushed Shireen to the ground and his long white nails are leaving bloody welts down her arm. More welts to match the faded scars on her other arm, and her thigh. “I’ll show you to not talk back to me!”

“Joffrey!” Jaime pulls Joffrey away by the nape of his neck and Joffrey squeals in pain and fright. “She is a princess! She is to be your wife and queen! You have no right to treat her like this!”

“But—but Father says—” and Rhaenys laughs because there is no sound as pathetic as Joffrey trying to justify himself.

“Apologize! _Now!”_ And even Rhaenys flinches. She hasn’t heard Jaime so angry since the night Aegon died and they presented him to Robert wrapped up in a red cloak while Mother stifled her screams into Rhaenys’s hair. Joffrey snivels out an apology before storming off, and Jaime offers his arm. “I’ll take you to your mother.”

“Thank you.” For a while that’s all she says, as they walk to Mother’s chambers and the blood beads down to her elbow. It drops in little splatters. Thank goodness she didn’t wear sleeves today, she hates it when Joffrey ruins her things. Her clothes, her hair, her happiness—whatever she has, he shreds it like fragile skin. All Lannisters do, don’t they? She asks herself this, then looks up at Jaime. “Ser Jaime…do you know what Lord Tywin does to my mother?”

Jaime doesn’t meet her gaze. He looks somewhere far away. “My father has never been a cheerful man, nor a patient one. But I assure you that your mother is Lady Lannister, one of the highest in the land. That gives her protection that even your grandmother didn’t have.”

Grandmother Rhaella, raped and beaten by her mad brother. Rhaenys doesn’t know if Tywin rapes Mother and she doesn’t want to know but oh, oh she does want to know, if only to give the Stranger more reasons to cast down her wretched stepfather. Turn the blood dripping from her elbow into the blood dripping from his throat! Rhaenys shudders. Then she demands, “What use is that protection when she suffers, Ser Jaime? She suffers and you know it! She, and me, and Jeyne, and Aegon,” his jaw twitches. Rhaenys’s voice sharpens, “Aegon is dead and no one punished his killer until he _drank_ himself to death! Mother was your Crown Princess, Ser Jaime! Why doesn’t she deserve the right to be protected? What about Grandmother? Jeyne is a hostage, what about your sister?” She brandishes her arm at him. “And when I marry Joffrey, what about me?! You know what he’s going to do to me, why don’t you stop him?”

“It is not my place.”

“You’re a knight! Don’t knights protect the innocent?”

“Not the Kingsguard.” He knocks on Mother’s door and lets her arm go. He steps back a few paces, then pauses. His voice is soft, and filled with sorrow like a high harp’s lingering notes in her memories. “One day I…I hope you can understand.”

“One day your nephew is going to kill me.” Rhaenys turns her back on him. “I already understand.” Then Mother opens the door and Rhaenys turns her mind away from Jaime and his failings. He sat on the Iron Throne while the Mountain killed Aegon. Today’s failing is a mercy in comparison.

Mother sends away her ladies and septas, the spies Tywin and Robert use to smother her. One of them opens her mouth in protest then Rhaenys brandishes her arm and flecks of blood mar the lady’s dress. They all scuttle away like good little scavengers. Mother helps her out of her gown; it’s speckled with blood but it can be salvaged with lemon juice. Mother lets her wear one of her casual gowns and Rhaenys giggles from feeling so grown up. Then her smile fades. Oh gods, when she grows older, she will never be able to escape this blighted castle and its blighted people. She squeezes her eyes shut until the sudden urge to cry passes. Mother doesn’t cry, so neither will she.

“Oh my little sun,” Mother croons, and folds Rhaenys into her arms. “Tell me what happened.” Rhaenys does, down to the last detail of Margaery’s unblinking eyes. Mother cleans her wound the entire time with steady hands. Even when Rhaenys says how Joffrey clawed her flesh open, Mother’s hands never shake. But, to Rhaenys’s horror, her voice does. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve been there to protect you.”

“You couldn’t have done anything, Mother.”

“You’d be surprised what I can and can’t do.” Mother stares into her eyes and pins her with her gaze. “Tell me the truth, Rhaenys, as I’ve heard different things from different people. Is Joffrey the reason why there’s scars on your arms and legs?”

Rhaenys looks away. Blame her arms on tripping in the gardens, blame her legs on falling from her horse. Joffrey is not even twelve yet and there’s a bite mark on her shoulder that’s taking too long to heal. Blame that on the cats…blame and blame and _blame_. But a marvel anyone believed such blatant blame and lies! “I thought everyone knew the truth.”

“If everyone knew the truth of harsh matters, there wouldn’t have been a Robert’s Rebellion to begin with.” Mother cleans and kisses it. A tear falls from her eyes to Rhaenys’s skin and Rhaenys wants to weep. She made Mother cry! She is the worst daughter in the world! “That will be the last time that boy touches you. If he comes near you at all, leave immediately—better yet, I’m assigning you a sworn shield. You said that Margaery watched it all and was the one to call for Jaime?”

“Yes?”

“That poor girl, I don’t wish Joffrey on her. If only Tommen was older, but that’s neither here nor there. I’ll speak to her parents and her brothers, and you will stay with me today.” Mother kisses her forehead and Rhaenys basks in the warmth. “He will never touch you again. And by the end of May Day we will be free.”

“We will.” Rhaenys will win that flower crown! Even if it means she has to claw open the rest of her body!

Mother shakes her head. “Nasty little hands he has as well. It’s for the best he touches no one at all, truly.” Rhaenys looks at her arm. There’s dark bits of dirt deep in the wound where Mother must clean. How odd, as Joffrey’s nails are usually straight and white on account of his vanity and fear of the training grounds. She rubs a bit of the dirt in between her fingers and smears the reddish brown into her palm. Mother is right—he is nastiness incarnate, no wonder there’s dirt.

Once her arm is cleaned and bandaged, Rhaenys lingers in Mother’s embrace. Mother rocks her like she’s a little baby again. Her chambers smell of sandalwood and jasmine, and the windows are covered in orange silk, and the bed is petal soft. It lulls Rhaenys half to sleep. In her haze, she asks Mother, “Were you ever the May Queen before?”

“Not quite. I was the Solstice Queen once, for midsummer. My friend Ashara was our May Queen. She asked your Uncle Doran for half a dozen sand steeds and he had to figure out where to find them all.” Ashara Dayne, the closest Rhaenys ever had for an aunt. Rhaenys remembers Ashara’s laughter and soft hands. She also remembers how much Mother wept when her body was fished out of the Torrentine; if the fall hadn’t killed her first, then the childbed fever ravaging her would’ve. What fear Ashara must’ve had, to choose to die rather than be killed. Rhaenys thinks she understands it.

Ashara’s daughter Allyria is a Dayne now, and they won’t let Rhaenys meet her. Yet another tally for the unkindness Rhaenys must bear. Perhaps one day she and Allyria and Jeyne will be as close as Mother and Ashara were. “…and my great-grandmother Princess Lysandra of Dorne was Harvest Queen, and many more women before then were Queens of all sorts.” Mother rests her chin on Rhaenys’s head. “Their blood all runs in your veins. You are of Houses Targaryen and Nymeros Martell, never forget.”

“And Arryn, Blackwood, Dayne, and Velaryon.” Rhaenys traces floral patterns on the bedspread. “Didn’t the Arryns and Daynes used to be kings? From the First Men and the Andals?”

“Aye. The Arryns and Daynes were kings, as were the Blackwoods and Yronwoods. You have the bloodlines of many kings and princes, even ones long gone. Have you learned about House Gardener in your lessons?” Rhaenys’s eyes open in a flash. House Gardener, founded by Garth the Gardener, son of Garth Greenhand. A man with green hands and green eyes who tilled the Reach to life. “The Gardeners used to rule all the Reach. The official line itself was lost in the Field of Fire to Aegon, Rhaenys and Visenya—more kings and queens in your blood—but not all of it. Years before dragons came to Westeros to conquer, Black Harren Hoare waged war against both the Reach and Dorne to take slaves to build Harrenhal. In an alliance against the Riverlands and Iron Islands, which were one and the same back then, King Garth married his youngest grandson Garlan to Princess Deria of Dorne. They had many children who married in and out of Sunspear, some to other houses with Gardener blood. To this day the Tyrells resent how even the Martells are more Gardener than them.” Mother laughs. “Poor Janna and Mina Tyrell wanted to marry your father, but once again they lost out on a crown. It must be terribly difficult for them.”

“Marg can have that golden crown on that ugly throne,” Rhaenys yawns, “I want a flower crown. And I’ll get one for you and me, and we’ll go back to Dorne with Jeyne. I’ve learned all about the May Queen and how it all started, I’ve studied it for moons now.” She spreads her hands wide. “The history and the magic, and how a lot of people descend from that magic. Like Houses Gardener and Crane, they descend from Garth Greenhand whose mother was a May Queen. And they say that Princess Nymeria was a water witch who created the Greenblood in Dorne. And her daughter was a Harvest Queen.”

Mother’s eyes flash with something Rhaenys can’t decipher. “Be careful with your studies, my darling. Your father…he lost himself to prophecies about magic he didn’t understand. Magic went dormant for a reason, you mustn’t fall into obsession over something long gone.”

“That’s why Father left, didn’t he?” Rhaenys muffles her voice into Mother’s shoulder. “He left us here, and now we’re still here…” Mother only explained it once: her father became obsessed with a prophecy about a dragon with three heads; a song of ice and fire; and a legendary hero reborn to save the world. He never told Mother the full truth of it and when he died he took that truth with him. Rhaenys wonders why he decided to rape Lyanna and leave Elia alone to be held hostage by the Mad King for the sake of those prophecies and dusty old scrolls. How was that part of any prophecy?

Spite hisses in her heart. If she could, she would turn back time and push him down the stairs before he could leave to start a war. Then maybe Aegon would still be alive.

“He did. And I will not lose you like how I lost Aegon and the rest of our family.” Mother lies Rhaenys down on the bed. “You’ve exhausted yourself, my darling, you need to rest. I promise May Day shall wait.”

Rhaenys dreams of a flower crown brimming with wine and magic, and crowning herself while everyone cheers. Magic is gone, she knows, but here in her dream it is real enough to taste. It tastes of thick red wine swirling with fragrant earth. Then she grabs hold of Mother and Jeyne with Myrcella’s face, and she spirits them away to Dorne, where the sand dunes bloom with wild poppies and the sand steeds kick up clouds of rainbow pollen and it all sticks to her like a second skin.

* * *

The honeysuckle round the porch has woven its wavy bowers,

And by the meadow-trenches blow the faint sweet cuckoo-flowers;

And the wild marsh-marigold shines like fire in swamps and hollows gray,

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

* * *

A moon before May Day is Joffrey’s twelfth birthday and most if not all the realm comes to cram themselves into the Red Keep. They’ll stay here through May Day and get their chance to kiss Robert’s boots all the while. Rhaenys stands on a parapet overlooking the Red Keep’s entrance. There she counts the sigils raised high by bannermen. All the Crownsland lords, all the Westermen and Reachers—her eyes widen. Even the Starks have come south for the first time since the war.

She quickly turns away. She does not want to see them. She does not want to remember the last time she saw Eddard Stark. Anything but that on an already awful day.

Rhaenys runs away to seek out Myrcella. Behind her Ser Garlan follows and she is grateful for his presence. He is three years older than her and already an accomplished knight; he opens doors for her and talks with her about their shared loved of Braavosi bravo novels and always asks about her needs. Tall and strong shouldered with big brown eyes that always seem smiling—he really is Garlan the Gallant. Best of all, Joffrey is terrified of him because Garlan can use two swords against four swordsmen at once and he is beholden only to Rhaenys. He smiles at her and Rhaenys blushes. He is practically perfect compared to every other man in the Red Keep. If only she could marry him, or his older brother Willas who Margaery has not a single bad word to say about, and leave Joffrey to whichever queen-in-waiting who can handle him! 

Myrcella is in the Great Hall though, and before Rhaenys can go hide in the library Tywin catches her eye. “Come here, girl,” he grumbles. He is rather sweaty considering how it is still only late winter and most people wear sleeves or a cloak. And he looks rather gaunt as well. Mother stands by his side, dutiful as ever, but Rhaenys swears she sees a flash of vicious joy in Mother’s eyes when Tywin coughs into a handkerchief.

Oh.

_Oh!_

Tywin scowls at Garlan who leads Rhaenys to his side and stands behind them. Rhaenys stands between Tywin and Mother and keeps a straight face. It’s all coming together, isn’t it? If she demands the king to set them free as May Queen and uses Tywin’s poor health as an excuse, well who is he to deny Mother a potent husband? He coughs again and it’s wet sounding. Good! She hopes he drowns on his own breath!

Rhaenys looks over Myrcella, Shireen, Margaery and even Tommen. Tommen’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes are red; Joffrey must’ve thrown one of his kittens down a well. If Balerion could survive that and remain Rhaenys’s darling grumpy bastard, then hopefully Ser Pounce II can too. If not Rhaenys will give him her kitten Marmalade and give the poor little boy some joy. Margaery is ever the shining rose and looks behind the crowd to smile at Garlan. She’ll need to keep that up forever as Joffrey’s queen, at least until she has an heir and a spare, then maybe Joffrey can go down the well. And Myrcella and Shireen both look rather pale, and Myrcella keeps all her weight on one foot. Rhaenys will tell a visiting Renly that his niece has been injured; Renly is an idiot and calls Shireen ugly and Myrcella stupid, but he loves stirring up drama and will gladly tell Stannis and Robert. Stannis is too wretched to speak to and Rhaenys will never speak willingly to the monster on the throne. Renly will kick up a marvelous fuss in her stead. He’s useful for one thing at least.

And then there’s Joffrey next to Robert and Cersei. A boy of twelve pissing green as grass, and he thinks he’s already a man. He smiles at her and Rhaenys looks at the tapestries on the wall. If the gods are just he will drop dead. But they haven’t been for a long time. Lords and ladies cycle through and all the while Joffrey smiles at her. What does he want? What is he planning? Why won’t he and his wretched father and grandfather just drop dead?! Rhaenys glances at the family kneeling before the throne and locks eyes with sharp grey eyes.

A younger girl is glaring at her—what’s her name? Arya Stark? With her long Stark face and brown hair and those cold grey eyes…Rhaenys clenches her fists until her nails threaten to cut her palms. So this is what Lyanna looked like. So this is what the girl her father raped and left to die in Dorne looked like. No wonder Robert gets teary eyed when he greets the little lady after all the pleasantries are over. And Cersei looks like she’s eaten fifteen lemons raw, and Mother won’t look at any of them, and Rhaenys can hardly breathe. Arya turns her gaze towards Mother and her lips curl in a sneer, and Rhaenys is ready to smash her little face in. How dare she blame Mother for Lyanna’s doom! Mother wanted no part of it, knew nothing of it until the Mad King dragged her and Rhaenys and Aegon to the Red Keep to explain her father’s crimes! What lies has she been told about Mother?!

How dare she! How _dare_ she! Garlan puts a steadying hand on Rhaenys’s back and she remembers herself. She inhales and exhales and emulates the gracious disinterest in Mother’s face. The warmth in his touch spreads to her legs and arms and gives her peace. She’ll have to meet the Starks as Joffrey’s betrothed. Let them look at the last Targaryen and see her Martell spine, unbowed and unbent and unbroken.

Joffrey takes her arm and whispers in her ear, “The Lady Sansa is far more beautiful than you. I finally understand your father’s madness.”

“The lady takes much after her gracious mother, this is true,” and Joffrey grins and pinches her arm until a bruise forms beneath her sleeve. It’s true though, Sansa looks like Lady Catelyn and Catelyn is a Tully. Nothing at all like her sister Arya; nothing like Lyanna. Rhaenys can bare to meet her gaze, which alternates between insipid joy and shyness.

“Lord Stark,” Joffrey says in his best charming voice. Eddard looks much like how Rhaenys remembers him: sad, and tired, and a far more pleasant sight than most others in Kings Landing. The last time she saw him though his face was red as he screamed at Robert for the death of Aegon. This time he smiles at her and Rhaenys wants to cry. If only he were king. If only she were to marry his son. Why couldn’t have great-great aunt Rhaelle have married a Stark?

“Your Highnesses,” and he bows over Rhaenys’s hand. “You’ve grown much taller than the last I saw you, my princess.”

Rhaenys dares to smile. “It’s hardly fair, my lord, you’re one of the tallest men I know. And the bravest.” She hears Robert shifting in displeasure, she can feel Jaime’s regrets. Fuck them both. She doesn’t care if Joffrey slaps the teeth out of her mouth for the truth. Then Rhaenys turns to Catelyn and her brood. Sansa is cloyingly sweet, and Catelyn is the soul of politeness, and Arya—Arya flinches away from her, finally remembering her place. Rhaenys is glad for it. Even if she likes Eddard, she doesn’t like the Starks. She doesn’t have the right to.

Myrcella gushes over Sansa’s dress and links arms with her. “I do hope that you enjoy Prince Joffrey’s nameday, and May Day! Be sure to join Lady Shireen and Princess Rhaenys and I in our lessons!” Rhaenys bits the inside of her lip. Why, _why_ did Myrcella invite her?

They wrap up their pleasantries, all the while Joffrey smiling at Rhaenys. Then at the end, Joffrey turns to Robert and says, “I’m glad we could meet the Starks in person, they’ve reminded me of something.” What is he planning? “On the morrow I turn twelve, Father. It used to be that twelve was when a man came of age, during the time of the First Men.” Joffrey pats her arm. “I might be young, but I do know of my duty to the throne, in being a king and siring strong Baratheon heirs. Father…I think the princess and I should marry as soon as possible.”

_What?!_

Rhaenys opens her mouth. She turns towards Mother who is glaring at Tywin. No. No, they could’ve have known! No one knew! Her heart hammers in her ears until all she can hear is her frothing blood. “Your Grace,” Rhaenys feels herself say, “while I am also prepared to do my duty, I am still young for the burden of motherhood.”

“Fifteen is hardly too young,” Cersei demurs, and there’s such vicious burning hate in her evil eyes. “Your grandmother knew her duty at twelve. It would be good for you to do good for the realm for once.” Robert glares down at her, until Cersei murmurs to him, “Her pedigree is suspect with having healthy children, but both her grandmothers got with child early enough. Best to get sons out of her while Joffrey still can.” And Robert nods, oh gods Robert nods!

Mother shakes her head. Her voice is as calm as ever, but Rhaenys sees the faint tremble in her fingertips. “The age of reason is sixteen, it will be children siring children. What need is there to rush before they both come of age?”

Rhaenys’s eyes lock with Eddard’s and she wonders if he can see the feral terror bubbling up her throat. Catelyn looks concerned, and the Starklings all look between them all in confusion. Margaery’s hands are clenched white in her skirts and Myrcella and Shireen glance at each other and Garlan’s hand rests on his sword hilt. But Eddard—Eddard must understand—Eddard knows what will happen to her, doesn’t he? Like Aegon! Like Grandmother!

Eddard looks back at her with quiet sadness. Then he says, “If I may interject—soon it will be the prince’s name day, then May Day. Let this matter settle after then.”

Joffrey nods smiling all the while. “Of course, I defer to your judgment my lord.” And that is that.

Rhaenys’s body fills with static, from the highest point on her head to the ends of her toes and fingers.

First the nameday, then May Day, then her wedding day and demise.

She must be May Queen.

She has no choice.

* * *

The night-winds come and go, mother, upon the meadow-grass,

And the happy stars above them seem to brighten as they pass;

There will not be a drop of rain the whole of the livelong day,

And I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

* * *

May Day comes with all the pomp and circumstance it deserves. If only Tywin could appreciate it, Rhaenys smiles to herself, but he is trapped in bed with that terrible cough. Now it brings up bloody phlegm and his bowels are as loose as his fever is hot. The maesters say that he has consumption and will not live to see spring turn into summer. Such a tragedy. Rhaenys weeps with joy before the Stranger.

Only Cersei’s poison can ruin her good mood.

Rhaenys does well to make herself scarce around the Red Keep. There are nooks and crannies she’s learned to hide in whenever Joffrey was bored and looking to sharpen his nails, or when her awful septa wanted more excuses to complain to Robert about Rhaenys’s behavior. Sometimes she, Margaery and Garlan sit with their knees pulled to their chests in an alcove overlooking the sea and he tells her all about the Reach and she imagines dancing in fields of endless golden roses. Sometimes they go beneath the stairs leading to the kitchens and eat stolen lemon cakes with Shireen and Myrcella. And sometimes she hides alone in Mother’s chambers and watches to make sure Tywin doesn’t come near.

The only times she’s been pinned into place was when Joffrey danced with her at his nameday with his hands bruising her waist. In the rush of dancers he spun her away down a corridor before she could yell for help. There he had his sworn sword the loathsome Hound hold her down so he could pinch and squeeze all over her body until she was thrashing in pain. Wherever he touched her, her skin burned and itched and did its best to tear itself free. Were it not for Garlan coming to her rescue and putting his sword at the Hound’s neck and swearing to gut them all chin to cock if they didn’t stop immediately, damn the royal privilege…when Mother found out she stared Robert dead in the eye and told him how Joffrey reminds her of the Mad King as he used to do the same to Mother, and Joanna Lannister, and Grandmother Rhaella, and all the poor maids of the Red Keep. “Your grandmother would weep to see this, or perhaps she would be wroth,” Mother said and all the color seemed to leave the king’s face. Robert gave Mother a black eye and a wrenched neck for that, but then whipped Joffrey within an inch of his life. Rhaenys pressed her ear against the walls to hear Joffrey’s wails and Cersei’s shrieks when Robert’s wrath turned against her—she laughed to hear it. She laughed because they deserved it. They all deserve it!

Later that night Mother put Rhaenys in an ice bath. The ice eventually soothed the vicious rash spreading over her body, but the water soon turned murky with sweat and dirt. Rhaenys, her head lolling on the edge of the bath and gasping for breath, swore she saw something stuck in her skin where Joffrey had pinched her rather hard. While Mother wasn’t looking, she slowly, slowly, _slowly_ pulled out the offender: a little leaf sticky with blood.

She doesn’t know what to think of that, so she doesn’t. Instead she thinks of the fallout. Tywin’s cough got much worse after the incident, and now even poor Joffrey seems flushed around his eyes and short of breath. Rhaenys loves to see it. He will meet the same fate as his grandfather and Margaery can marry Tommen and someone can shove Robert against the Iron Throne until the sword barbs pierce through his blubber out his black heart. If the gods won’t give Rhaenys justice, she and Mother will have to make justice of their own.

There is certainly a lack of justice during the daytime. Rhaenys has had to slog through most painful dancing lessons with the Stark girls because Myrcella _had_ to be kind. Between Sansa and Myrcella squealing and Margaery’s cloying charm and Shireen and Arya getting in a fight because Arya won’t stop starting at Shireen’s face…Rhaenys wonders if the gods will never let her know peace. If they like to see her suffer.

They must, as Cersei finally catches her in the gardens. Garlan sees Cersei before she does and whispers a warning in her ear. Rhaenys nods and steels her shoulders before giving Cersei a curtsy. Cersei says, “Child, won’t you walk with me?”

Rhaenys bites her tongue. “Of course, Your Grace.”

Cersei leads her towards the edge of the gardens where the cliffs rise over Blackwater Bay glittering below. Suppose that Cersei pushes over the edge, will they ever find her body? Cersei gently pats her arm. “I’ve discussed matters with the king. A moon after May Day you shall marry my son.”

No she won’t. But Rhaenys nods. “As is my duty as a princess of the realm.”

“Yes, as a Baratheon princess.” Cersei gives her a strange smile. “And then you will bear his children.” Nausea curdles Rhaenys’s guts until she shivers. “I’m sure you will be a beloved wife and queen, no matter your heritage and unhappy history. I know that Joffrey is…hard to love. But, if I may give you advice: the more people you love, the weaker you are. Look of what became of your grandmother and mother who dared to love. You’ll act the fool to make them happy, to keep them safe, and they will not save you. Your mother loved her prince and that did not save her husband nor her son, did it? Did your grandmother’s love for her husband and son save her when the storm rolled in and her ill begotten child ripped its way out? I would hate to see you suffer the same fate, my child.” Cersei pats her cheek and to Rhaenys’s horror it comes back wet with tears.

Rhaenys tries to keep her chin steady. She can’t take that to heart…she can’t remember how Mother suffered because she loved her father and her father abandoned them to die! It’s…it’s lies, isn’t it? She thinks of Joffrey kneeling over her and hurting her—she will _never_ love him no matter what. But when she returns to Dorne a free woman, will she fall in love? Will they abandon her like Mother and Grandmother Rhaella, and will she be left to die? Dripping so much blood from a sodden red cloak—Rhaenys asks, “Do you not want me to love your son, Your Grace?”

“Love no one but your children. On that front a mother has no choice.” Cersei grins and it’s so hideous, so cruel. “Tears are indeed a woman’s weapon, you and your mother know that well. Use the weapon between your legs and I’m sure Joffrey won’t beat you like how your grandfather beat your grandmother. Otherwise I’m afraid it will all be your own doing.” Rhaenys shudders. Cersei looks in the distance and smiles. “Ah, the king is coming. Bend the knee, child.”

Rhaenys hates curtsying before Robert, she hates looking up at him and seeing his hate. Rhaenys doesn’t think she has anything of her father in her—her skin is olive, her hair is black and curly, her eyes are brown, her entire being is of Mother’s. So why does he look at her like how he looked at Aegon’s corpse? “Your Grace,” she whispers.

“Dragonspawn.” Never Rhaenys, never girl or child or even just you—always dragonspawn. Robert roughly forces her to look up at him with his giant hand. Joffrey’s hands will be big as these one day, big enough to choke the life out of her with one hand free to muffle her screams. His fingers flex as if Robert considers doing just that right now in the gardens in front of everyone. And there is such hate in his eyes, Rhaenys knows were it not for Garlan three paces behind them, were it not for Robert’s fear of Mother if Mother has nothing left to lose, she would die here. Nothing more to that. “Be on your best behavior, I won’t have you ruin everything.”

Rhaenys wants to scream at him. What better behavior can she give him?! What will make him happy?! She bites her tongue bloody and holds back her tears; bobbing another curtsy she murmurs polite nonsense. Robert sneers. “Your whore of a mother trained you well. But no amount of pretty bows and dresses will hide your face, Rhaegar’s face.” Rhaenys shivers. “If only your raper father had the same sense to bow and kneel—then maybe my hammer would’ve missed his chest. It was only your mother’s begging and the Lord Hand’s wisdom that kept me from trying out that hammer on you and seeing the difference.”

Cersei giggles and Rhaenys feels Garlan shifting and across the gardens she spies Margaery staring at them all with her face stark white. Rhaenys wants to yell at her to run away back to the Reach and never come back, damn the promise of a crown! But she can’t. There is so much she can’t do and it makes her skin itch and bleed from the want of being able to do something. Anything!

She bows again and Robert gets bord and leaves with the queen. Cersei pats her arm as she goes and Rhaenys feels her sleeve stick to her arm; she’s bleeding again. “My princess?” Garlan’s voice is soft, soft like the wind blowing up the cliffs. What she would give to bottle up that softness and replace all the Red Keep with it.

Margaery makes her way to them, with Shireen quiet and pale at her side. Margaery holds Rhaenys’s hands and there’s no artful pretense in her face, no calculated charm—there is only horror, and sadness. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers. “Maybe…there must be a way to free you from this place, I’ll talk to my grandmother.”

Rhaenys murmurs in return, “I’ll be the May Queen and wish myself and Mother away. Then you can have Joffrey.”

“I’d rather have a rotten fish,” Shireen hisses, and the three of them smile. Myrcella loves her family, they can’t tell her about this. But they have their reasons, one or another, to loath Robert and Cersei and Joffrey and Tywin. Shireen squeezes Rhaenys’s shoulder. “So you plan to use the May Queen’s boon? Let us help you, I’ll trip a dozen maids in the maypole dance if I need to.”

Rhaenys smiles again, this time truly.

And as they raise the maypole in the fields outside Kings Landing, and as the merchants and travelers and lords come to congregate in the dust pavilions, and maidens nobly born and smallfolk pick out their flowers, Rhaenys starts her plan. She crafts her flower crown. She sews her dress. She mentions to Sansa that maybe Arya shouldn’t dance if she hates dresses so much and instead Arya should try the skipping stones contest. She reads runes to Mother at night and the dim light in the hearth illuminates the quiet awe and fear in Mother’s eyes. She sleeps in the gardens and wakes up with petals in her mouth.

May Day dawns bright and beautiful.

Rhaenys dawns determined.

She will have her crown; there is no other option.

* * *

All the valley, mother, ’ill be fresh and green and still,

And the cowslip and the crowfoot are over all the hill,

And the rivulet in the flowery dale ’ill merrily glance and play,

For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.

* * *

The maypole is at the center of the festival grounds. At the north end of the clearing is the great wooden pavilion where the king and his family stay, and where the king grants the boon. All around them are stalls and booths and lofty tents and mummer’s stages. But most of all, the maypole is at the center surrounded by four giant rings of maidens.

It is midmorning. The sun is bright in a cloudless sky. And it is finally time for the dance.

Rhaenys stands at the outer ring of the maids. They are all dressed in white, no stays and no voluminous petticoats and no shoes; only white linen dresses delicately embroidered with flowers. Maiden colors for maidens. Atop their heads are wreaths of flowers, from daisies to jonquils to spring roses. Rhaenys has thistles in her crown. Thistles and orange lilies and petunias. Some other girls look at her flowers in askance, but Rhaenys looks ahead at the maypole. So many flowers twist up along the vines of ivy and sheaths of moss. What she would give to be like those flowers and climb up and away from here.

The music starts. They all hold hands, and curtsy to the pole. Rhaenys bows low enough to brush her lips against the grass. She squeezes her eyes shut, and breaths one silent, desperate prayer. She prays to win. She prays to win…

They rise, and they dance. Every other ring dances clockwise, and the others counterclockwise. Garlands stream down from above and the clouds whip across the sky in Rhaenys’s vision. The drums are steady, as are the strings and the horns. People clap, people shout, the maids giggle and whisper to each other. Rhaenys looks ahead of the curve and sees so many white dresses and flower wreaths. They dance faster.

They stop. Rhaenys holds her hands above her head and spins. She bows low to the maypole, once, twice, three times and her flower wreath scratches her scalp. They spin, and spin, and spin. Then the music stops and girls fall to the ground laughing. Once they leave the clearing, the rings reform. Rhaenys is one ring closer to the maypole. And then they dance.

This time in reverse, Rhaenys sees how some girls trip on their bare feet. They spin, bow, spin again. Then they pair up and spin each other, before reaching out and pulling themselves along the rings like pulling on the garlands, pulling on the hands of all the maids come before them. Rhaenys passes with Margaery. She passes with Myrcella. She passes with Shireen. She passes with Sansa. She passes with many maids, maids as sweet as spring. Blonde hair, red hair, green eyes, brown eyes. Rhaenys dances with them all.

When the rings reform, they stop. More maids fall. They go again. They stop. They spin, and spin. The clouds blur. So many white dresses. So many flower crowns. The drums beat until Rhaenys’s heart melds with the sound, until her breaths are the horns and her hands are the strings and her eyes are on the maypole always. The boundaries between the white of the dresses and the colors of the flowers and the blue of the sky, they shift. They meld. New colors indescribable flash beneath Rhaenys’s eyelids.

Myrcella falls out of the ring and throws up on the ground. Rhaenys tilts her head back as she spins and throws it forward when she bows. Margaery trips herself into another maid. Rhaenys feels blood trickle from her scalp behind her ears. Sansa twists her ankle the wrong way and collapses. Rhaenys flicks her skirt out to flare like a blooming flower. Shireen tumbles away. More maids fall. Rhaenys spins along in pairs, and she laughs. She laughs, because the clouds are deafening in the sky, and the grass is singing a chorus beneath their feet, and her blood is blooming with thistles and petunias and lilies. With a song she cannot describe. She dances with a maid with lush golden hair and pink blushing cheeks. She holds hands with a maid with coiled red hair and a sweet smile. She spins with a maid with curly dark hair and glowing dark skin. She bows low enough to kiss the blood in the grass and give it some of her own, and when she rises she sees a maid with long brown hair and bright green eyes grinning back at her.

Rhaneys dances.

She dances.

She dances. The rings tighten. She dances. She spins until her eyes roll about in her head. She dances. The maid with green eyes laughs and asks her why she wants to win. She dances. Rhaenys says she wants to win to become the May Queen because that will set her free. She dances. They bow. Maids fall. She dances. People shout. The maid laughs again and says that the May Queen shall set them all free.

Rhaenys dances. The maids fall. There is silence singing in her feet. And then she looks around, and sees that she is alone, and the garlands fall all around her, and she is close enough to the maypole to touch. She reaches out and presses her hand against the flowers and the vines and the moss, she feels it sink through her fingers through her skin through her flesh and bones into her blood—

She pulls her hand away leaving a wet handprint. She inhales, and exhales, and _smiles._

“The winner is Princess Rhaenys Targaryen!”

Rhaenys turns back to the crowds who cheer for her. Most of them seem incredulous that she has won. Some, like Mother and her friends, are happy. Some, like Robert and Cersei, are furious. Tywin who has finally come down from his tower looks ready to flay Rhaenys alive. But they can do nothing—Rhaenys has won the ancient rite of becoming the May Queen. Her heart pounds in her chest. She is the May Queen. And the May Queen gets one boon, one boon the king cannot deny.

She is the May Queen!

She is freed!

She smiles so wide that her lips threaten to split, and she bows low in the grass.

Soon, Rhaenys has a new crown of flowers. Flowers of every kind and color curl around her head and up into seven prongs. Every time she inhales, a cloud of sweet vapor fills her lungs and her eyes and her mouth. She has a new dress too. From her neck to her feet, she is spring reborn: daisies, lilies, day jasmine, violets, orchids, hydrangeas, pansies, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, bluebells, forget-me-nots, camellias, hibiscuses, roses, so many roses. Even winter roses for spring.

She sits on a special throne, constructed with the same wood and vines as the maypole. She is seated before the raised pavilion where Robert and the Lannisters and Baratheons are, where they will listen as she heralds spring and demands her boon. Rhaenys’s hands shakes. She will be free soon, and Mother and Jeyne too, and they cannot stop her. They can’t!

Mother’s eyes shine with tears and she is the first to curtsy before Rhaenys. “My queen,” and her voice envelopes Rhaenys with love. She reaches out and Mother kisses her palm. “You’re so beautiful, my darling. Not even the Maiden can compare.”

“I hope she doesn’t mind,” Rhaenys says. She glances around to check that the king and queen are preoccupied with Joffrey’s tantrum about having to kneel before her. Then she leans in and whispers, “It’ll be over soon, Mother. We’ll be free.”

Mother hugs her as close as she can with all the flowers. The sweet vapors made Rhaenys’s mind hazy with joy. “My little sun,” is all she says. Then she steps back, back into the loathsome custody of Tywin.

Then come endless waves of people asking for the May Queen’s blessings and favors. And with every lord and smallfolk come to kneel at her feet, the vapor grows stronger. The colors grow brighter. The sun shines like fire above their heads. Her scalp bleeds from the pressure on her wounds and her blood is sticky on her skin like flower sap. Rhaenys’s lips tremble and spark with alternating numbness and overstimulation. So do her hands, and her feet, and every inch of her seems alive like the electricity in the roots of a storm-blown tree.

She feels as if she could vibrate out of her seat into the ground. And when she is in the ground—what would she do there? She looks down at her dress, where the flower petals shift with every breath. Opening, and closing. Like little breaths of their own. When Garlan bends his knee before her and kisses her hand, the flowers breathe faster. She decides that when she and Mother and Jeyne return to Dorne, she will have a garden. A garden as wide as the sea, with flowers and shrubs and moss and trees and thorns. Dragons do not plant trees, but she will. She will drip seeds from her fingertips and sew a new life. A new happiness.

Rhaenys feels a drop of blood fall from behind her ear. She watches from the corner of her eye as it falls onto her dress, then rolls like oil over water onto the earth. And there, a bit of clover unfurls from the weight of the blood. The blood is streaked with earth and the red and brown clash so beautifully with the green.

“As by the ancient rite blessed by the Seven Who Are One,” and Rhaenys looks up as Robert reads from a yellowed scrap of parchment. His voice grates out like someone carves it from his back. “Rhaenys of House Targaryen is the May Queen of this coming spring. With the coming spring comes fertility, prosperity, and joy to all the realm. And as our May Queen, the King of the Seven Kingdoms shall grant her one boon of her heart’s desires.” He crumples the parchment. Rhaenys has never seen such hatred in his eyes. “So, what shall it be?”

Rhaenys licks her lips. She raises her chin. She inhales the smells of the flowers and the earth and the blood and the sky. And she says, “The boon of my heart’s desire is one thing, King Robert: I wish for my mother the Princess Elia, my sister the Lady Jeyne and I all be allowed to return to Dorne and be freed of any bonds of marriage or betrothal, so that we may live our lives in peace and comfort.”

The crowds gasp. Tywin glares at her, as do Cersei and Joffrey and all the rest of the high lords. Mother clenches her fists until her knuckles turn white. Then they all turn to Robert and hold their breaths. Robert stares at her. Rhaenys stares him down with a fire of her own as the sun heats the back of her dress until she feels that she shall turn to steam.

“No.”

Rhaenys blinks.

No?

_No?_

Her heart pounds in her ears so loudly that she fears she’s misheard him. But the looks of shock on everyone’s faces, the mutterings of how no king has ever denied a May Queen her boon before—

Rhaenys stands. “You will grant me my boon, King Robert. The ancient rite—”

“I will not be lectured to by a dragonspawn whore!” Robert rips the parchment in half and throws it to the ground. “I know your plotting, girl! And I will not let you and your mother escape justice!”

She can’t breathe. _Justice?!_ Her chest heaves and the flowers gasp. The sun burns her skin. The air reeks of sweetness and blood. All around her she hears yelling, and shouting, and Mother’s hiss of pain when Tywin sinks his nails into her upper arm. She wrenches her arm free of his grasp but trips and falls from the pavilion’s edge headfirst to the ground. Shireen and Myrcella call out and they try to climb down to help Mother but they won’t let them help her, no one is helping her, she’s bleeding and they’re just standing there—

Rhaenys stares.

The colors all blend into white, until they are sent through a prism and explode in a multitude of fractal rainbows, colors she cannot even describe. She can see everything, down to every minuscule speck of sunshine illuminating the bloody clover crowning at her mother’s cheek. The smells do the same, as do the sounds. She can see everything, smell everything, hear everything. All is bright, florid, springtime, _May—_

_She has been denied what she is owed._

Her scalp splits open and flowers erupt.

Then she screams.

The sun flares and people shriek with agony. In an instant, the pavilion with the Baratheons, the Lannisters, the Kingsguard—it bursts into flames. Billowing flames rage upwards in the shape of a giant orange lily. Rhaenys’s eyes widen until thick vivid tears soak down her chin and turn to crystal in her gown. She looks around, and where she sees the gold cloaks and cronies of the crown, more fire blooms like petunias and thistles. Everything burns, and everyone screams.

Rhaenys jumps down from her throne and runs for Mother. Her flower gown grows until blossom trails behind her in a great train that grows and distorts with every heartbeat. She can hear the most vile, broken screaming from within the pavilion, shrieking and shriveling with the last bits of air. Shireen and Myrcella are crumpled by Mother, they’re bloodied and burnt and weeping. She grabs at all three of them and pulls, and the motion pulls them all the way back to the throne in a rush of rippling earth and grass. Vines twist and make Mother a bed. Myrcella and Shireen cry in a pile of soft cool moss until they are quiet. Rhaenys presses her ear to Mother’s heart and weeps, she begs for Mother to wake up…Mother opens her eyes and gasps for breath, and Rhaenys weeps again with joy.

She weeps, and she howls. The sun howls along with her and the sky has never been this shade of crystal prism blue before. Nor have the flames been so iridescent, and the grass so malachite green. Rhaenys stalks forward and wherever she steps, flowers bloom. The trees twist and bend to her blinking. The earth trembles with her lips.

She turns to the crowds of people who wail in helpless terror. She sees so many faces among them. Jon Arryn is collapsed on the ground with foam at his lips while his wife Lysa shrieks and tugs at him to rise. Margaery clings to Garlan who is trying to command the Tyrell bannermen to find a safe retreat for them in the chaos. Smallfolk pile over themselves trying to escape the rings of fire Rhaenys has made all around them. The Starks huddle in a little group while Arya cries for her mother. Lannister sycophants try to rescue their lords and catch aflame trying. Tommen is dragged out of the flames by Jamie, Tommen’s skin dripping off his arms, until Jaime falls over dead. Then Tommen lies in a wine puddle forgotten by all. Littlefinger is trampled to death by a crowd of terrified children. People die and their lives soak into the earth. The animals all around them go wild, with birds shrieking and horses stampeding and dogs howling at the sun. All is chaos. All is destruction. All around her are the sounds of life, living and dying and _living._

And the maid with bright green eyes raises a cup of brimming blood red springwine to Rhaenys and drinks deep.

Rhaenys watches it all. She breathes it all in. She drinks it all in. She consumes the _feeling_ of it all and it consumes her. And slowly, the crescendo of noise and chaos distills into chords of song. The song has no words, no language—it doesn’t need any. But she knows it, as she knows how jasmine blooms from the scars on her body. The song of spring is awake again and she stands at the source, she _is_ the source.

She understands. And the people screaming, they do too, because they begin to smile. They scream, and they thrash about, and they smile. They dance in their terror until the terror turns to mania. To joy. The flower wreaths in their hair unravel more blooms and the flush in their cheeks darken and their eyes brighten. The more they dance the more her body thrums with electricity, with the vibrations of the earth, with the power of the crown blooming from her bloodied head.

The pavilion burns. It burns and she watches it burn with rapture as all the people inside turn to ash and to dust. They must’ve been terrified, they must’ve died in pain. Did Joffrey scream for his mother? Did Cersei scream for her father? Rhaenys shudders deep down to the earth. They suffered! They suffered, as she suffered, as Mother suffered, as everyone in her family suffered! And now they are ash and dust! Gone to the wind! Fertilizer for spring! Years of pain bottled up and fermented erupts into sweet vapors all around her and fills the air with her vengeance. Rhaenys screams, and screams, and _screams_ until everything she sees vibrates with her screams and the world is naught but burning and her delight of its demise.

It all burns down, and from the ashes Rhaenys watches weirwoods with laughing faces sprout, surrounded by thistles and lilies and petunias of every color imaginable.

Rhaenys’s lips tremble and twitch. Her eyes burn. Her legs go numb.

The sun shines down upon her and illuminates everything in delight.

The maid approaches her, and offers her the cup, one hand passing along to the other.

Slowly, slowly, Rhaenys smiles.

She drinks from the cup and it is done. All the sensation, all the feeling, all the _everything_ —it is done.

She loses herself to the whirlwind of life and blood. She is free.

Finally, finally she is free.

Rhaenys is the May Queen.

All Westeros trembles before her.

* * *

So you must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear,

To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year;

To-morrow ’ill be of all the year the maddest merriest day,

_For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May._

* * *

**Floriographic meanings of Rhaenys’s maypole dance flower wreath:**

**Thistles: endurance, bravery, and pain**

**Petunias: resentment and anger**

**Orange Lilies: hate, pride and disdain**

**If you’re wondering “what the hell just happened?”, here’s a basic tl;dr of the May Queen:**

**The May Queen is one aspect of a magical figure/goddess in the Age of Heroes when the First Men and Children of the Forest lived in Westeros. The Threefold Queen is a triple goddess, comprised of the May Queen for spring, renewal, joy and sacrifice; the Harvest Queen for late summer/fall, fertility, industry and familial love; and the Solstice Queen for both midwinter and midsummer, change, wisdom and death. The May Queen is the most powerful of the three, as she is the conduit of the rebirth of the earth followed by the change and death brought on in winter.**

**First Men kings and Children of the Forest would offer sacrifices of animals and humans to the May Queen on May Day. She would then ask for a boon which must be granted no matter what. When it is granted, the May Queen allows spring to take root, and the sacrifices provide extra fertilization for the growing seasons and warmer days. If the boon is not granted, then the May Queen unleashes her wrath in whichever way she desires; usually it is not a fun experience.**

**The rituals of the Harvest Queen and the Solstice Queen also involve sacrifice and granting of boons, but the sacrifices are usually less bloody (for example, for the Harvest Feasts the sacrifice is the consumption of the harvested produce and sacrificed animals in a great celebration, and the Solstice Feasts involve dancing and singing under the midnight sun and midday moon) and are less ritualistic in Westeros than May Day. The May Day is highly syncretized with the Faith while the others aren’t. However, certain houses, the North and the Freefolk still keep to all four of the Threefold Queen’s days: May Day; Midsummer/Summer Solstice; Harvest Feast; and Midwinter/Winter Solstice.**

**The May Queen originally manifested in whole form, but then adapted to manifesting in the form of whoever won the May Day maypole dance as the First Men (and later on the Andals) grew more populous. And the same for the Harvest Queen and the Solstice Queen—some May Queens have become Harvest and Solstice Queens and fulfilled the entire role of tripartite goddess in one lifetime. One example is Gaiya, the mother of Garth Greenhand, as she helped her son make the Reach into the fertile lands famous in Westeros; alas the maesters and the Faith forget to mention her role in that. The triple aspect of the Threefold Queen matched that of the Maiden-Mother-Crone triumvirate in the Faith, so May Day became a celebration for the Maiden.**

**The unnamed maids that Rhaenys dances with are previous May Queens that she connects with, in no particular order of age:**

**Girl with lush golden hair and pink blushing cheeks: Queen Alysanne Targaryen**

**Girl with coiled red hair and a sweet smile: Jenny of Oldstones**

**Girl with curly dark hair and glowing dark skin: Princess Deria Martell of Dorne**

**Girl with long brown hair and bright green eyes who gives Rhaenys the cup: Gaiya, mother of the legendary Garth Greenhand and one of the “original” mythic May Queens**

**Author's Note:**

> …sooooo how’s that for a oneshot?
> 
> I’ve seen a lot of fanfics with magic, mostly about First Men (almost always of the Stark variety even though the Reach has the wild legends of Garth Greenhand and all his kids) and Valyrian magic. I wanted to do a different take on it that was influenced by springtime rituals in pre-Christian Europe and the movie Midsommar; it was really fun to write. There’s a whoooole lot of blood sacrifices in this story, but there’s no darkness—it’s the light that’s killing people, and springtime requires fertilizer. And now Rhaenys is sorta a living form of a triple goddess with no one on the Iron Throne. Good for her lol


End file.
